


The Fine Line Between Comedy and Pathos, or It's Not Just Fluff

by abrae



Series: Compulsive Meta [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:48:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrae/pseuds/abrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meta originally posted to Tumblr discussing Sherlock's emotional trajectory throughout series 1-3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fine Line Between Comedy and Pathos, or It's Not Just Fluff

Having had a record seven hours between my last crying jag and now, I’m in a bit more of a position to talk a bit about what, to me, was so successful about The Sign of Three.

I’ve seen the world “fluff” used in relation to this episode, both positively and negatively, but to my mind - and, obviously, my emotions - it was anything but. As I’ve mentioned before, Sherlock - for me (I’ll eventually stop qualifying this, but I don’t want to be prescriptive here) - has always been about this Sherlock Holmes’s emotional maturity and development. Without going into too much analysis of previous seasons, the arc has been: S1: Sherlock discovers that he does, in fact, have a heart; S2: Sherlock discovers that this heart is prepared to make him sacrifice almost anything - physically. That is, he’s prepared to die - or, at least, to make it seem so; but, critically, he hasn’t really accepted or understood yet that  _other_  people have a heart that’s inclined towards him. And because he doesn’t - or can’t - accept the love that others have for him - can’t even recognize it as such, but only as that ‘sentimentality’ he’s always disdained under his brother’s emotional tutelage - he remains emotionally insulated.

And then he goes away, and he spends two unaccounted-for years effectively alone. And I keep coming back to this, from (of all things) Little Women (go with me here). In a chapter entitled, “All Alone,” Jo, having lost Beth, hears the news that Laurie - whose proposal of marriage she has rejected twice - and Amy are to be married. Jo marvels that Marmee has kept her thoughts on the subject quiet for so long, and Marmee replies, “I was half afraid to put the idea into your head, lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was settled.” The rest of the conversation goes like this:

> "I’m not the scatterbrain I was. You may trust me. I’m sober and sensible enough for anyone’s confidante now."
> 
> "So you are, my dear, and I should have made you mine, only I fancied it might pain you to learn that your Teddy loved someone else."
> 
> "Now, Mother, did you really think I could be so silly and selfish, after I’d refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?"
> 
> "I knew you were sincere then, Jo, but lately I have thought that if he came back, and asked again, you might perhaps, feel like giving another answer. Forgive me, dear, I can’t help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart. So I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now."
> 
> "No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I’m glad Amy has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing. I am lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said `Yes’, not because I love him any more, but  **because I care more to be loved**  than when he went away.”

It’s that bolded bit that I keep coming back to when thinking about this new, softer Sherlock. As his interaction with Mycroft over the hat at 221B suggests, in his years away -  _alone_  - Sherlock has finally learned what loneliness is, and he doesn’t like it. He’s known for awhile that John is important to him, but I think it takes this time away from John, with only the John in his head for company (and, oh, how that John seems to be pushing Mycroft [and his influence] away bit by bit), to begin to understand what, exactly, that means. 

This, incidentally, is why I see the before-the-cut train sequence as true. John hasn’t forgiven him yet, and Sherlock is desperate for it - for John. He doesn’t just want his friend, he needs him, and he’s prepared to go on his knees and beg for that forgiveness. And - I’ve mentioned this before, but I may know someone in real life who manages to deflect every. serious. emotional. conversation. we have with humor at the first available opportunity - so when he gets that forgiveness, he verbally disavows it with his laughter, but acknowledges it with that sly smile, and it seems clear to both of them (as I see it) what’s really passed. I’m afraid I just can’t see it as assholery.

Be that as it may, this is where that conversation - if you accept it as more true than not - leaves us. John has forgiven Sherlock, and they are reestablished as friends and crime-fighting duo.

And this is where TSOT works so well for me, because Sherlock isn’t done yet, not by half. This is the episode in which we see him learn not just to love, but to  _be loved_ , and if that seems easy, it’s not. And since he’s learning to be loved at the same time that his relationship with John is under the greatest amount of potential emotional threat - all those warnings that things change after marriage - it’s only natural that he’s going to be having some mighty heavy feelings, and to my mind this is where the comedic - not fluff! - aspect of TSOT comes in. They could have played this straight, and we might have walked away with a sense of Sherlock as stoically accepting the change (which he kind of does), but I think it would have been a rather heroic stoicism. Sherlock Holmes being above it all - which wouldn’t really constitute much of a change from previous seasons. He loves, but walks alone - we’ve been there already, and I think that’s what a wholly dramatic narrative would have given us.

But this is pathos, conveying Sherlock’s vulnerability as much as anything else, and pathos seems always to work best against a comedic backdrop. As so many people have said since last night, it’s a really funny episode until you watch it again and every funny scene is undercut by Sherlock’s increasing emotional vulnerability. This is Sherlock becoming not a Hero - not a “great man,” which he already was - but a  _good_  man, and I think we need the comedy in order to see the pathos that makes him so wonderfully sympathetic here. He’s ready to be loved, he’s spent a whole episode essentially opening up emotionally - coming unknotted with each funny little episode until he’s laid bare, and I think that’s why that last scene at the reception - the smile that fades to seriousness, his eagerness (!!) to join the party preempted - hit me so hard. He’s ready, he’s willing, he’s so terribly vulnerable, and circumstances say, “not yet,” if not actually, “no.” When he tells John and Mary to dance, there’s a moment when they all  _know_ what he’s doing - that he’s relinquishing, gracefully, something he holds so desperately dear because doing so gives John what he wants, and Sherlock, after so many years, seems finally to have learned that that’s what hearts do. They don’t make grand, dramatic sacrifices - those are moments for drama queens. Hearts make a million small sacrifices, every day, and all so quietly as to (almost) go unnoticed.


End file.
